Ghost particles / THESIS EXHIBITION

Charlie White is a photographer and filmmaker whose work has been exhibited internationally since 1999. White holds the position of Associate Professor at the University of Southern California’s Roski School of Fine Arts.

Torbjørn Rødland is a Los Angeles-based photographer known for portraits, still lives and landscapes that transcend their often banal settings and motifs and move into the otherworldly. Since the late 1990s, his work has been exhibited widely.

Composer Kubilay Üner offers a reactive experience with a live presentation of a new composition made in response to the exhibition Angie Bray: Shhhh. The performance will be interspersed with conversation between Üner and Bray.

Kathryn Andrews gets some of her best ideas driving around Los Angeles, where the visual contradictions she sees every day find their way into her art. Andrews, who is originally from Mobile, Alabama, is known for the commonplace objects she fabricates from highly polished and painted metal, into which she incorporates inexpensive or borrowed finds, including rented Hollywood props.

Los Angeles Premiere Screening of

The State of Creativity

A Look into the Otis Report on the Creative Economy

Otis College of Art and Design is pleased to announce the formation of a media partnership with KCETLink. The partnership will bring the 2014 Otis Report on the Creative Economy of the Los Angeles Region and the State of California into the digital age through an interactive, multi-platform presentation developed by, and for, KCETLink’s award-winning arts and culture series, Artbound.

Introduction

It was artist and writer Bia Lowe who first told me of her wish that one day there would be a compilation of every public event that had ever taken place at the Woman’s Building. She was, she said, keeping files of fliers and newsletters, with the intention of someday working on that compilation.

Before Bia moved from Los Angeles, she handed over those files to me, as if in the hope that I would pick up her mission. That wasn’t my plan. I had considered it a quixotic dream, likely impossible to attain. After all, eighteen years of daily events—classes and workshops, exhibits and performance, video screenings and readings, and social gatherings—who could ever recapture a complete record of it?

In the mid-nineties, the graduate student Michelle Moravec was working on her dissertation at the University of California, Los Angeles; she was studying the Woman’s Building. As part of her research, she visited the Woman’s Building collection at the Archives of American Art, part of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D. C. Sifting through what were, at the time, some eighty boxes of un-catalogued documents, Michelle compiled a timeline of events as she found them. This timeline was, however, uncategorized as to the kind of event and often, which artists participated.

When Sondra Hale and I began to co-edit From Site to Vision: the Woman’s Building in Contemporary Culture, we believed it important to include a timeline and turned to Michelle’s. It provided a tremendous foundation. Having participated at the Woman’s Building, Sondra and I were able to provide additional structure, coherence, and to expand upon the number of events.

And so I found myself fulfilling Bia’s original vision, using her files as a basis, along with my own somewhat imperfect sense of recall, working to reconstruct a history of public events from 1973 to 1991 at the Woman’s Building. I was eventually assisted in these efforts by Darolyn Stroley, a student of Sondra’s in the Women’s Studies Program at UCLA, and by M. Gwin Wheatley, who conducted an initial copy editing of the voluminous document.

As Otis College of Art and Design began to prepare for its “Doin’ It in Public” exhibition about the Woman’s Building as part of The Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time: Art in Los Angeles 1945-1980, they provided additional assistance in the form of Joanne Mitchell, who continued the effort to fill in gaps in the document, and Elizabeth Pulsinelli, who did a final copy edit.

Despite these many women’s efforts, I anticipate omissions, errors and incomplete entries. How could it be otherwise? In the seventies, we were so busy changing the world we never bothered to put the year after the date on our flyers. We are also working from incomplete documentation; while the Archives of American Art represents the largest collection of papers of the Woman’s Building, the “complete record” is dispersed among the tens of thousands of women who participated over its eighteen-year history. We want to assure readers and Woman’s Building participants that if we have left out or incorrectly represented an event, it was accidental. We invite you to provide us with additions and corrections by sending them to Maberry@otis.edu. We will do our best to verify changes and add them to the timeline on our website within three months of receiving them. We do not guarantee to implement changes we cannot verify. Thank you for your help!

Milestones Prior to the Opening of the Woman’s Building

1968

1970

Feminist Art Program founded by Judy Chicago at Fresno State College
Women artists protest the “Art and Technology” exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which included almost no women artists
Founding of Los Angeles Council of Women Artists

1971

Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro found Feminist Art Program at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts)
Sheila Levrant de Bretteville founds Women’s Design Program at CalArtsWomanhouse, a collaborative installation, is created by students in the CalArts Feminist Art Program

1972

Womanhouseexhibited to the public
West Coast Conference of Women Artists hosted by Feminist Art Program and West-East Bag
Women’s Caucus for Art founded at College Art Association annual conference

The Woman’s Building

1973

Organization Milestones

Feminist Studio Workshop (FSW) founded by Judy Chicago, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, and Arlene Raven
FSW students and volunteers renovate the historic Chouinard Art Institute building
The Woman’s Building opens its doors at 743 South Grandview (11/28)

Social and Community Events

Maria Isabel Barreno of “The Three Marias” lecture(2/1)
Slide show on the mother image in art (5/10)
Rap group on mothering and how women feel about it (5/17)
Discussion of feminism and sexism in children’s books (5/31)
Program about childcare, including discussions, films, and speakers (6/4–7)
Building Women fundraiser (5/15, 7/15)
Press conference for opening of new Building (12/11)
“The Woman’s Building of 1893 at the Columbian Exposition, Chicago World’s Fair,” presentation by Ruth Iskin (12/19)
New Year’s Eve Comedy Revue and Dance in honor of International Women’s Year (12/31)

1977

Organization Milestones

The Store, a thrift shop created by artist Nancy Fried, opens
Lesbian Art Project (LAP) founded by the Natalie Barney Collective: Arlene Raven, Terry Wolverton, Nancy Fried, Kathleen Berg, Donna Reyna, Maya Sterling, Sharon Immergluck
Ariadne: A Social Art Network founded by Suzanne Lacy and Leslie LabowitzChrysalis: A Magazine of Women’s Culture begins publication
Woman’s Building receives NEA funds for New Moves scholarships for women who are poor, minority, ex-offenders, or elderly to participate in Woman’s Building educational programsWomen in the Printing Artscatalog published by the Woman’s Building

Performances

Feminist Art Workers national tourIn Mourning and In Rage, collaborative performance by Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz at Los Angeles City HallVirginia Woolf: An Uncommon Evening, by Sara DeWitt (1/29)New Voices, evening of performance to benefit the Woman’s Building (2/19)The Rise of the Fates, written and directed by Z. Budapest (10/27–28)

Film and Video Art

Women’s Video Center presents an evening of videotapes followed by open screenings (2/11)
Woman’s Building Film Series: The Best of the New York Festival of Women’s Films (12/18)The End of August at the Hotel Ozonescreening (12/24)

Literary Events

In the Name of All Women Writers Series: Rochelle Holt and Courtney Graham (12/10)

1978

Organization Milestones

Woman’s Building receives CETA IV grant to hire and train staffSpinning Off begins publication
The Video Project launches to create fifteen public service announcements about issues vital to Los Angeles women
Woman’s Building celebrates fifth anniversary, raising Kate Millett’s Naked Lady sculpture to the roof of the building